[Chrono Series] Replaying Chrono Cross [Archive]

Forsaken Lover

03-12-2018, 12:03 AM

Wolf Kanno

03-12-2018, 04:09 AM

So I was kind of monopolizing the Favorite Cross Characters thread and that isn't cool. I'll just make my own topic for my second run.

This is in response to WK....

Yeah I think you told me about that Miguel = Chrono theory back when I first played C. Of course, I don't recall Chrono having a Holy Dragon Sword. And Serge actually has Luminare. Hm.

But speaking of Miguel, I am about to enter the Dead Sea. Wish me luck.

Good luck with the real final boss of the game unless one insists on fighting Dario.

I went over to Nikki's ship as cats to see him talking to Irenes, spied on Fargo as cats to see him looking at Zelbess' mirror, I talked to Nikki before leaving the Zelbess... That is everything to make sure I can finish the sidequest, right? Now I just proceed with the plot?

I think so? It's been years since I've played but this discussion has me in the mood to do a new playthrough since it's been so long.

Also I'm really wondering if i want to use Sprigg. She has like one good monster right now. Does she learn Dopplegangers from being in the party or is it just anyone you fight and defeat?

If you have the Forget-Me-Not Pot equipped, any enemies killed by that character can be Doppleganged by Sprigg. Not sure if this new mod changed things and let you have access to it early, but in the Bend of Time on NG+ you can enter the locked door and fight Ozzie, Flea, and Slash from CT, all of whom can be Dopplganged by Sprigg and is required for the only Triple Tech Serge has with Kid.

I also have Draggy, yay! He's so adorable. He succeeds where Poshul failed. Everyone loves him, for starters.

I don't think I've ever used him oddly enough, maybe once before switching back to my old team.

I never really stopped to think about it before but Funguy's and Van's reason for joining the party is because our heroes are after the Frozen Flame. Only...they're not? I'm not even sure what Lynx-Serge's motives are right now. He was told to head to the Sea of Eden so maybe that's his goal? Or is it to get back to Another World? There's also trying to figure out what happened to Viper, the Dragoons, etc..

But searching fro the Frozen Flame? Not really a goal at present.

Yeah, I imagine Serge's goal at this moment is getting back his body and trying to figure out why the universe hates him so much.

I went to recruit Starrky but I want to trap Ultra Nova and I don't have a trap for it yet so I guess he'll have to wait.. And Miguel has Holy Light too, right which you can also trap. Sadly, even if they were purchasable in the regular game, they aren't here. I just have to hope I stumble upon one of them.

Unless they were changed, you'll find the Traps for both spells in Marbule (Another World) for sale in the Kid Bro Shop.

Okay, I kinda lied. Wasn't ready to enter the Dead Sea yet. I remembered the Garai fight, just didn't remember it was now. That is another reason I'm doing this replay - my memory of this game is very fragmented. I remember broadly what happens but details and order of events elude me.

But anyway, Garai. He hits like a smurfin' truck. Lynx is the champion and does like 200 per Level 3 Attack but he also gets chewed up by Garai and can barely survive any of Garai's Elemental attacks, even with Diminish. The fight was Lynx doing damage, Radius and Janice trying to keep everyone alive. I hadn't planned on using Radius but it felt appropriate for plot reasons. Plus he has good stats all-around.

But man, now I'm paying attention to stats, Lynx hideously outperforms everyone in Strength and HP. Only Draggy comes close in terms of HP. His magic is only a bit better than Irenes and she has better Agility so that's something i guess. I was thinking about using Irenes, mainly as a healer. But her HP sucks. Maybe give her the Kung Fu Shoes and she can become an evade machine.

I will say that the one thing this game has in common with Xenogears gameplay style is the whole "easy dungeon, difficult bosses" trope in full swing. I do vaguely remember my last attempt at a playthrough I got to Ft. Dragonia and was blasting through the regular monsters so badly that combat was getting tedious, only to get curbstomped by the Sun Boss Guardian. Ah memories.

Forsaken Lover

03-12-2018, 06:29 AM

So you need this Forget Me Not Item in order to guarantee she learns a new transformation?

And you're saying that if Sprigg transforms into Ozzie, Slash or Flea, she can perform a Triple Tech with Serge and Kid?

The only multi tech I ever did in CC was Serge's and Glenn's X Slash or whatever it was called. I know there aren't as many in this game as there was in CT, not even close. It is one of the few areas I think CC lags behind CT in terms of gameplay. But I mean, what are the odds anyone would stumble upon that particular Triple Tech?

Wolf Kanno

03-12-2018, 09:58 AM

There's only like two triple techs in the game and both are actually just Cross versions of two popular techs from Trigger. The first one requires Serge, Leena, and Razzly which is funny enough the more difficult one to acquire since Razzly can be killed even if you're on the right path; and Leena needs her final tech which requires that you said the right things in the beginning of the game, as well as acquiring Razzly's innate that also is a giant guide dang it.. This triple tech is actual Delta Force (Crono, Marle, and Lucca's Triple Tech) whereas the other one requires Serge, Kid, and Sprigg transformed into Slash. This move is Z-Slash and is similar to the triple tech used by Crono, Frog, and Robo.

It still boggles my mind that the game has over forty characters but only eleven combination attacks, two of which are the triples.

Forsaken Lover

03-12-2018, 04:20 PM

I beat Miguel on my second try! Party was Lynx, Irenes and Draggy. I have a single Diminish on Draggy and wouldn't you know it, Miguel started the first battle off with Antiblack on Draggy. I should have had the Demon Charm on him but oh well. I'll remember that for next time. I just started over and once Diminish is in play, the fight is rather simple. He has a very set pattern. I know a guy who said he found Garai the more challenging boss and I can see why since Garai loves to combo physical attacks and you can't really do anything about them since Lynx is your damage dealer for that fight so you can't just keep him Defending all match. But here my trusty strategy of Eagle Eye + Lynx using Level 3 Attacks over and over again was more than enough to destroy Miguel in pretty quick order. And of course Irenes and Draggy spent all match just healing or buffing.

But yeah, Holy Dragon Sword on Lynx without Diminish did over 700 damage in this. Diminish is going to be vital from here on out.

In more plot-related news, long before I played CC and also still after I played it, I heard people say the characters of Chrono Cross have no personality; they're just a series of accents. I rejected this idea and I still do but it is a bit...off-putting to have Draggy talk about the Dead Sea. "A conglomerrrrtion of buildings"? When the hell did Draggy learn that word?

I imagine it must be peculiar to have any of the sillier characters involved in the more dramatic parts of the plot. But Draggy isn't Mojo or Funguy, I wanted to use him because he is kinda well-suited to the main plot, ya know?

Wolf Kanno

03-12-2018, 06:29 PM

Yeah the wacky and eccentric cast are a bit off putting to the main scenario.

Forsaken Lover

03-13-2018, 01:57 AM

A couple things I've noticed in terms of gameplay and somebody confirmed these are bugs:

1. Diminish never wears off. I thought maybe it just lasted a ridiculously long time but, nope, it's permanent even though the description says temporary.

2. If you input commands fast enough, you get more turns than you should. I had noticed that if I mashed the Attack button I'd get in another attack but if I held off the enemy got their turn.

All this adds up to why melee really does reign supreme by the mid game. Shame but I still love this combat system. There's more involvement to it than an FF game at least.

I just got Grobyc and am about to go to Hermit's Hideaway. I think this is about when the flood of party members starts.

Also I liked that I met Guile in the Termina tavern but he refused to join me. He asked me to understand and that was it. Understand what, pal? You didn't give me an actual reason why you won't rejoin my party right now. He was right there too when it all went down at the top of Fort Dragonia. We've been through so much together....

Wolf Kanno

03-13-2018, 05:36 AM

He just doesn't want a Lynx to cramp his magic style. I mean he spent all of Chrono Trigger with a passive aggressive Frog man he made, a cave woman, some brats from the nowhere age, and a giant can opener. Magu...er Guile knows what's going to transpire here.

Yeah, magic just doesn't quite pack the same punch by endgame unless you have some of the + versions and you're really exploiting the elemental field and weakness element of the game. I often felt magic was more useful by endgame for defensive purposes like making sure the Dragons don't get their full elemental freak show going so I would cast a spell to keep the field from going full colored. Not to mention once you can start making the Prism versions of weapons or heaven help you get the Double Einzhanders and the Mastermune, it's really hard to justify worrying about your elements outside of the Dragon battles and the final battle. At least it pulls and FFVIII and keeps support magic viable until the very end.

Wolf Kanno

03-13-2018, 06:04 PM

Just discovered this artist (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCem6BWKNlfJepFHuM2ad8FQ), and felt it was appropriate for this thread.

6gqcjoITX8U

Forsaken Lover

03-13-2018, 09:03 PM

Just discovered this artist (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCem6BWKNlfJepFHuM2ad8FQ), and felt it was appropriate for this thread.

6gqcjoITX8U

I just found that yesterday, too! It's so good.

I've been rolling with Marcy in my party, she's surprisingly good at just about everything. Plus she is Blue so she has CureAll which, as far as I can tell, is the best party heal spell in the game. Heals for 400+ HP.

I'm missing people though. Characters I got last time. Maybe Pip only shows up again when you are Serge....? I let him out at the start of the game.

I tried to get Serge's body back first thing this time around since when I first played the game I went around fighting the Dragons. But the game is like NOPE. You gotta do that before you get your body back. I guess it works for proper dramatic purposes.

Speaking of drama, the Marbule Concert and retaking Marbule was beautiful. I loved thatthey kept the music playing while we did all the fighting. I didn't expect a Rock Opera. Why don't people ever talk about this like the Opera Scene? The game really went all out with the Playstation graphics and ability at storytelling.

Wolf Kanno

03-13-2018, 11:14 PM

Yeah Serge doesn't get his human form until nearly the end of the game.

Depending on the characters missing, it may be likely that they only join if you make certain choices in the game like helping Kid or not. Other than that, it's more likely that you need to be Serge or have a specific party member in your group when you talk to them.

As for Marbule being left in the dark compared to the Opera Scene from FFVI due to the following reasons:

A. Not as many people played Chrono Cross compared to FFVI
B. The Opera Sequence was an interactive cutscene in an era where such things were unheard of, as opposed to the Marbule concert being a scene followed by a dungeon, which is pretty basic fare for the genre.
C. I'm sure most players missed the scene on a first playthrough (I know I did) due to the sequence being incredibly easy to miss. I also don't know how often people replay games or take advantage of NG+, so chances are most people are not even aware the scene exists.

Your thread combined with my own waxing on the subject last year (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/170194-WK-s-Top-something-or-other-let-s-just-say-quot-games-quot-and-call-it-good-list?p=3670389&viewfull=1#post3670389), has made me interested in doing a new playthrough of CC cause it's frankly been ages since my last time through. I may dive into CT before that cause I kind of want to refresh my memory on the new content released in the DS version, but NG+ will make this task super easy as well as being portable.

Forsaken Lover

03-14-2018, 09:31 PM

Well I hope you end up enjoying yourself and feel free to write about your thoughts as you go along. I'd like to read them.

Ya know, given all the characters in this game, I couldn't help but wonder who were technically the best. I've Googled Chrono Cross Character Tiers and Chrono Cross Character Rankings and stuff like that.

I swear I've heard Riddel is the best mage in the game but I dunno. I likes Irenes. She has good magic and better everything else than Riddel. Maybe it's because I've been using her? I dunno, Riddel just doesn't interest me so I don't think I'll ever use her.

Just about to tackle the Sky Dragon. People weren't kidding when they said teh Black Dragon is way harder than the others. I missed it my first playthrough as I noted earlier and he was the first Dragon I fought. He destroyed me. I barely beat him after the Green Dragon. So far, only Black and Red have proven real challenges. The others were pretty easy.

Wolf Kanno

03-15-2018, 12:40 AM

Black is a beast, generally any enemy that is Black Innate tends to be really powerful in this game, same with White Innate. Yellow always seemed to be the low man on the totem pole in terms of elements as I don't remember the Yellow Dragon being much of an issue and it is hard to think of a strong innate Yellow character in your team that's on par with the actual bad ass party members.

Riddel is probably considered the best cause all three of her Techs are pretty great, Lv. 3 heals and restores status for the whole team, Lv. 5 boosts the whole teams defense by 20% and Magic Defense by 25%, and her final one let's her reuse any element she's already used in battle. Throw in the fact she's got the highest Magical Attack power of the cast and her Fierce attack is a group hitting ability, she's honestly a bit more ideal than a few other characters if you want to bother with a mage character. Her only downside is her glass cannon status as a mage. Granted, I feel Irenes is fine as well, though I tend to favor Guile as my mage character.

Well I took the plunge and started a new game of CC as well since it's been ages and I've been channeling the need for some Chrono love in the last few months. Also, since I'm playing this on my PS3, this is a fresh file and I'm thinking of mixing it up a bit in my story choices.

In my dreams sequences, I got Razzly, so I'm thinking I may go the Save Kid route despite knowing how awesome Glenn is, but I've decided that I'm going to stray from my usual habits and forgo getting Guile and Glenn this file cause it will mean I'm actually going to have to really use the cast this time since my default team won't be available. That, and I haven't seen some of the scenarios in ages cause once I learned how to get Glenn I've always gone that route, not helped by my dislike of Korcha in the Save Kid route. So I wonder if I should go with Nikki or Pierre to get into the mansion?

I've reached Another World, I didn't get too far last night cause I started late. I've decided that Poshul is the reincarnation of Chu-Chu from Xenogears, which seems fitting since Lucca most assuredly died in Lahan and this is her vengeful spirit on the Chronoverse. She's not bad, but not great. Definitely feels like a character you're grateful to have in the beginning for the sake of actually having people, but then you quickly ditch once you have better people.

Still not wild about the battle system, it's kind of slow and it can be annoying when enemies interrupt your combos. I still feel like the Elements could have been done better, but I'll wait to see how I feel once I'm a ways in.

In terms of Audio and Visual though, CC is still one of the best games Square made in the PS1 era. The game also does that "camera zooms around the battle field before battle/loading screen" like FFIX, but it's shorter, doesn't actually feel like a loading screen and the locales are gorgeous with incredible detail. If only Hurricane was a better track, though it does have some interesting musical callbacks to CT's battle themes.

I think what is kind of interesting about CC so far is that barring the action packed prologue, the opening of the game mirrors the opening of CT in subtle ways like Serge waking up when his mom calls, his house has curtains that can be opened and closed, and the family has a pet cat. Both Crono and Serge begin their journey oversleeping and missing an important appointment with a childhood friend, and both end up having to wait around and kill time with menial mini-game like tasks before they can meet their friend and the weird trout kicks in. Sadly, fighting Gato to figure out the combat system is more fun than getting my ass handed to me by Radius but them the breaks. At least CC gets you into the action early whereas CT takes its sweet time.

Similarly, Arni has a similar vibe to Lahan, being a tranquil fishing village as opposed to a peaceful mountain village, but they have similar vibes to them. Probably cause Kato actually wrote the Lahan section of Xenogears. I think the other aspect that makes them similar is that everyone in this village feels like a philosopher when you talk to them and more than a few NPCs say some cryptic trout that heavily foreshadows elements within the plot. I was noticing as I listened to the OST as well how many musical pieces CC borrows from Xenogears as well.

Anyway, I'm probably going to turn down Kid the first time in order to recruit Leena. Not sure about Nikki or Pierre yet...

Forsaken Lover

03-15-2018, 01:00 AM

I glanced at Pierre's route when I startedthe game and when you get turned away at the gates you have the option of just fighting the guards and presumably storming in. So it's quick and sweet but maybe there's more to it like if you try to come up with a plan. People have told me it's amusing so there must be more to it.

But like you said earlier, Nikki's route has the most Plot so it's probably the best i guess.

I like when you turn Kid down the game is like "we can't believe you are shitting all over this girl who just saved your life." You have to refuse her no less than THREE times. I felt so guilty. I love Kid.

I've said it since I first played Cross but it feels like it's more a love letter to Xenogears than a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Kato was very clearly influenced by his time on teh XG writing team and CC takes after Gears' tone far more than Trigger's. Add in stuff like Demihumans and racism and multiple heavy-handed handed themes all swirling around an Existentialist Plot and you have Xenogears 2.0 more than Chrono Trigger 2.

And Riddel certainly does seem to have some great Techs, I'll give her that.

Wolf Kanno

03-15-2018, 09:17 AM

Cross is a sequel for fans of Trigger who grew up and needed a meatier version of the Chronoverse, which is likely why I liked it. Though I won't deny that working on Xenogears certainly had an effect on Kato.

So against my better judgement I chose to go with Nikki cause I've only done his quest once and that was my first playthrough way back in 2000. So my memory was pretty fuzzy about the whole deal. I've come to the conclusion that Nikki might be the worst choice of the trio in gameplay terms. Not only is his quest the most annoying of the three but frankly, Nikki sucks as a party member. Low accuracy, worse damage, and he's not even a great mage compared to Leena who herself isn't even top tier in that department. His attitude also kind of sucks as well since he really cranks up the prima donna aspect more than Pierre who is at least smacked around in the plot for his hubris for comic effect.

75132

Exactly. So I rescued the "Star" traipsed through an obnoxious swamp into an even more annoying cave and finally reached the mansion. I've collected Kid, Poshul, Leena, Mojo, and Nikki so far. Viper Manor is at least entertaining, but I wish Nikki was a more useful party member, which you would think he would be since most of the enemies are Red Innate and he's Blue, but it's really working the other way around here. On the brightside, I've been getting a ton of awesome White Elements for Serge and I've collected several useful materials for weapon/armor crafting once I get out of here.

I kind of forgot how pushy Kid is as well, and how quick she is to fighting her way out of a situation. Not to mention I forgot that she has some obsession with treasure that makes her do stupid things like the obvious trap that gets you into Luccia's lab. Thankfully she's a good party member and Pilfer is a great ability, but I'm starting to remember why I preferred Harle.

I'm starting to think I may go back on my word about choosing the Save Kid route, not because I need Glenn, but more because my bad vibe concerning choosing Nikki will likely come back when I have to deal with Korcha. I'm starting to remember that my one gripe during my first playthrough was the lack of decent party members only to discover it was because I simply kept making bad choices in my first playthrough. With the exception of the ending, altruism usually gets you the short end of the stick in this game.

Forsaken Lover

03-15-2018, 07:29 PM

Razzly is a decent party member! And apparently she has a Triple Tech with Serge and Kid.

But yeah, sucks to hear about Nikki. I was never much interested in Michael Jackson either. He gets extra dialogue with Marcy though from what i recall.

I remember my first playthrough you spoiled me on who the Prophet was right away. You don't learn about that shit for SO LONG after that first meeting and you told me like 30 hours early. I might have said it was okay but, in retrospect, it's one helluva spoiler.

Ya know, it is kinda easy to see why people think the characters of Cross have no character when such pivotal moments as Serge getting his body back just kinda...come and go. Sure Steena comments on the plot importance of it but what about the characters?

Guile, Leena, Greco and so many more are suddenly "back" and there is no cutscene or real comment or anything. They're just selectable once again. It's really disappointing.

This game could really benefit from some "minor" fanfiction. Nothing to really tweak the plot or whatever, just add in the character moments and development that would really help inject some life into the group.

One thing I've become really interested in is where everybody hangs out when they aren't in your party. Like, Razzly, Starrky and Draggy are at Home Hermit's Hideaway, just frolicking and being adorable. That's nice. Them hanging out together makes sense.

Marcy and Riddel are in a room on the Invincible. That's...random. I didn't expect that.

I'm still trying to figure out where everyone else is. Guile and Greco are in the same place they always were.

Wolf Kanno

03-15-2018, 08:25 PM

I think only a few characters go to unique places and the rest simply return to where you recruited them. Yeah, Cross' cast feel very detached from the plot overall, with only a few exceptions. If Cross ever got a remake treatment, and it should, I would like Kato and the team to come back in and probably relegate half the cast to NPC status and then add some scenarios to make the other half feel more prominent in the plot. Adding some more Dual and Triple Techs would be a must as well cause there is so much potential for pairings.

I think it would also be cool if a remake added two new dungeons that involve entering some other alternate realities. Like one based closer onto Radical Dreamers and then maybe the Reptite dimension would be cool as well. I mean the DS version of Trigger added two new dungeons so why not Cross?

As for Balthazar, it's only really a plot twist if you have never played Trigger. I remember spotting him on my first playthrough and after getting over the shock of him being alive, realized that shit was about to go down.

Forsaken Lover

03-16-2018, 12:53 AM

Wolf Kanno

03-16-2018, 01:15 AM

Well I got utterly annihilated by FATE. On the bright side, I have access to Rainbow equipment!

...or I would if i: A) had any clue how to get Shiny materials besides Disassembling unique equipment (I have plenty of Shiny Dew but I haven't come across any of the others at all.) and B) If I chad the 72,000 Gold needed to outfit everyone with the requisite armor(Getting even half the Gold needed for one piece of equipment is a chore in and of itself. The mod I'm playing seriously nerfed money drops. The most you get is 200-300 Gold per battle, and that's with Profiteer Purse.).

Rainbow weapons be nice but the armor to survive FATE'S countdown move is probably the more important thing to focus on.

I looked it up for you, and I'll be damned, Summons actually have a purpose. The Shiny Materials only drop from enemies defeated with a summon. Farming them is easier in NG+ due to a certain item becoming available by that point, but Shiny Salt and Soot will be difficult to farm since there are no Field spells for those two elements.

I also need to re-explore Chronopolis because I think I missed some information. None of the stuff I read talked about Lavos for example. I'm positive there is some exposition on that matter somewhere. Also I really feel like there's something for Grobyc.

There should be a terminal somewhere that discusses Lavos, though the first terminal about him is actually in the Dead Sea in Home World. Grobyc's Lv. 7 Tech is in Chronopolis but you need him in your active party to get it.

Forsaken Lover

03-16-2018, 01:36 AM

So I need to buy summons to get the Shiny Materials? Hm...that's not too much of a problem. Thank you.

And my money woes are (temporarily) cured. Somebody else played the mod besides me and they said there are two of this otherwise worthless accessory named Golden Tiara. You find one and another is a rare drop from one of the Vita bosses you fight before going into Chronopolis. I actually looked that up, too whilst playing the game. I wanted to see if the different Vitas were harder and what they gave as rewards. I ended up going with Unus because it dropped Vigora which, judging from how Grobyc and Dark Serge annihilated me with it, seemed very useful.

So I missed out on one Tiara but I got the other one you find in Home Isle of the Damned by having a Wisp blow up near a suit of armor. Very interesting, I never would have thought of that on my own. Anyway, Golden Tiara sells for for 75,000, at least in this! So that's one set of Rainbow armor taken care of once I have the materials. And Serge gets the Mastermune so there's really no point even buying him a Rainbow weapon so that saves me some cash.

And I've never used Grobyc but I think if you find it the game will just say "this looks likeit's for Grobyc" so I just didn't even find it this time around.

Anyway, with my gameplay woes solved, back to the plot. In both my playtrhoughs I don't think I ever found the Lavos stuff in the Dead Sea. That's interesting but sucks I missed it.

Forsaken Lover

03-16-2018, 09:57 AM

Well I'm sure my two Prism Mails and my Prism Vest helped but the real key to beating FATE is making sure the field is White when she does her ultimate move. Makes sense. Load up everyone with 3 Recovery Alls at Level 1 and just have them spam those before teh Countdown hits 0. I suppose you could also throw in an offensive White Element but eh.

Vigora is awesome, Serge only got one crit in his attack spam but I still did about 2000 damage to FATE right at the start of the fight. What's also awesome is CureAll, which an be dropped and stolen from enemies at the Chronopolis Bend of Time. Both of these are specific to Blue Innates.

Basically, Blue is the best Element and I love Irenes.

Wolf Kanno

03-16-2018, 06:41 PM

Good job taking down FATE. I will say that making the Spectra Swallow is still in your best interest due to the Mastermune being one of the things that doesn't carry over into NG+, so you're only making poor Serge deal with second tier nonsense. Same reason why your should make the Prism equivalent of the sword for Glenn if you choose to since the Einlanzer also doesn't carry over.

As for my game, I decided to suck it up and and Save Kid. I mean, I'm probably going to wait another ten years to do that scenario again anyway, might as well remind myself why I don't do it very often anyway. The Hydra Marshes might be one of the few parts of the game outside of the Dragon God Relic quest that I actively dread in this game. The enemies are tanky even in NG+, you have to battle several boss like fights but only one counts towards your stars, and this is the part of the game where status effects come into full force and you discover that the priority of Allocating Elements on your grid usually forsakes the status healing elements. None of this is helped by the poor choice in playable party members in the early game if you don't grab Guile. I think the surprise member of this whole mess was finally using Greco so I can have another decent offense character who doesn't have to rely purely on elements.

I was able to rescue Razzly, and I was mean and made sure not to bring her along for the Hydra battle in order to gain her Lv.7 Tech later on. Razzly is a pretty potent member actually and she might become a new active member until the second Tech skills become available which will make Leena more useful. Once you gain a few Star Levels, Nikki does start to pull his weight, but he's obviously a mage character and not nearly as good at his job like Guile is. Not helped by the fact that his Tech skills seem to be physical base. Korcha is more physical minded, but still a lukewarm character compared to powerhouse Glenn who has better defense and can pack a bit more punch with a good enough weapon. Of anything my real issue is that all of my story-centric party members during this time are Blue Innate and as we all know, it's not a good idea to fill your party up with too many of the same elemental innate unless dealing with a boss. My other issue is the sheer lack of decent Green or Yellow innates in the early game. Razzly is going to fix Green for me, but that still means I'm stuck with Poshul as my only Yellow, and the early game is filled with Yellow and Green innate enemies.

Speaking of these two elements, am I the only person confused by their elemental properties? I mean why is Yellow both Earth and Lightning, and then Green is Wind and Plants? This is something that has always bugged me about this game. The other issue is that despite how powerful Yellow's spells are, I don't remember the game ever giving you a decent mage with this element, whereas every other element has usually one character specialized for magic in their element.

I also dropped into Another World's poisoned Hydra Marches in order to retrieve another piece of Skelly and collect the Life Sparkle in order to recruit Neo Fio. The best thing about this venture was actually getting Kid to steal an Earthquake Element from one of those tanky centipede monsters. This spell is pretty overpowered by this point. I only wish she was able to steal the rare accessory from Harle during her boss battle but I will have to settle for the upgraded PhotonBeam spells instead.

Anyway, I'm on the S.S. Zelbess helping Fargo deal with the Ghost Ship, it will be nice to finally have a decent melee Blue innate with Fargo. I also wish I had access to a Blacksmith cause I've been stealing Iron from the Skeleton enemies and can finally upgrade some gear.

Forsaken Lover

03-16-2018, 08:53 PM

Yeah I just realized I'll have to make his Rainbow Swallow because the mod I'm playing nerfed the Mastermune hard. It's not even as strong as the Stone Swallow now.

Didn't the Mastermune have an insane Crit Rate though? I can't remember.

And yeah, the total lack of Yellows for dozens of hours is really frustrating. And I also was confused by what "element" Yellow was supposed to be. It's really inconsistent compared to Blue or Red. And i also was realizing there's no Yellow Mages at all in this game and that's also something which has been bugging me as I head for Terra Tower.

Is the boss fight with Harle a Nikki route thing? I don't remember that at all. I thought you just fought ZOAH and Marcy like usual.

I remember back when I was first playing CC there was a poster elsewhere who challenged that that Serge just had no motivation to do anything. Like, why is he going after Lynx? What is driving him? My answer then is the same as the one I have now; Serge clearly has feelings for Kid (even if you refuse her at all opportunities, which is a strange design decision and maybe even a bad one but whatever) and he's also probably just curious about why this evil cat-man knows him and what all that stuff he said meant. Plus, lynx had already sent goons after him so Serge probably figured he had to go on the offensive.

I still found more personality in Serge than Crono but that's because I largely just find the Twerp Trio of CT to be the worst part of teh game. Magus and Frog are the best characters because they have the strongest motivations, personality, backstory, etc.. And I think I might replay CT after I'm done with CC, dunno yet.

I beat Dario. I remembered the trick of how he counters certain Elements with Debuffs so he could potentially never even attack you. I made some use of it but I didn't break the whole fight that way. I mainly just used BatEye on him and he counters with LoRes.
But I remembered why I hate Riddel and think she's overrated. You have to use her for this fight and she can't take a single damned hit.

Oh and I found the terminal on Lavos in Chronopolis. It's on 3F which is optional and I missed my first time. I love Chronopolis because it feels appropriately climactic and important, ya know? Good music and design, too. But the showdown with FATE is very unsatisfying. Especially when you learn the identify of Lynx later on. This is teh Goddess who has been controlling everyone, ruining innumerable lives, and it just becomes a big...dinosaur thing and then dies and we move onto the Dragons.

Also more Kato loves Xenogears: Evil entity possesses Hero's Father who possesses his own son's body.

Forsaken Lover

03-16-2018, 11:28 PM

Long before I played either Chrono game I heard a debate about whether or not you even needed to play Trigger before Cross. Many people played Cross with little or no knowledge of Trigger.

Well, I've settled the dispute of whether or not you need to play Trigger before Cross in order to appreciate it.

I played CT a few years ago but holy smurfing trout, I did not rememberLucca's mother's name. And if you don't remember her name, you cannot do the Code to get Kid's Level 7 Tech. The game helpfully reminds you that Lucca's dad's name is Taban but WHO smurfING CARES.

It drove me mad, I ran around the orpahange, ruining the otherwise perfect atmosphere and storytelling, all because I was madly searching for some clue about what the smurf her mom's name was. I eventually gave upt and just looked it up.

But there you have it. If you like Kid and want her to be at her best, I hope you played Chrono Trigger. And recently so you remember the name of a minor NPC. The scene with rescuing Lucca's mother is like the best moment in the whole game in terms of writing but hell ifI could remember the name. I don't think that's my fault and it certainly wouldn't be the fault of anyone who didn't even play Chrono Trigger.

I'm being mostly facetious here, I'm just really irritated. I hate when games do strout like this

EDIT:

I do have to wonder a couple things though.

1. What happens if you leave Kid in a coma? I suppose it's sort of like the Hydra poison and she'd just get better anyway so the ending still works? Although if you did leave Kid alone it totally saps the ending of any emotion in my view.

2. I wonder if there were Shipping Wars back in the day where people got mad Crono ended up with the superior option Marle?

But, overall, the Burning Orphanage is possibly the best storytelling in this whole game. It is a piece of true art and I wanna hug Kid forever and ever.

Wolf Kanno

03-17-2018, 06:20 AM

Yeah I just realized I'll have to make his Rainbow Swallow because the mod I'm playing nerfed the Mastermune hard. It's not even as strong as the Stone Swallow now.

Didn't the Mastermune have an insane Crit Rate though? I can't remember.

Yes it does, which is why it was considered a superior weapon over the Prism Swallow despite being weaker stat wise.

And yeah, the total lack of Yellows for dozens of hours is really frustrating. And I also was confused by what "element" Yellow was supposed to be. It's really inconsistent compared to Blue or Red. And i also was realizing there's no Yellow Mages at all in this game and that's also something which has been bugging me as I head for Terra Tower.

After a little research, it looks like Mel is the best Mage option for Yellow innates, bust sadly her overall stats are poor and she is one of the late game characters you recruit and she can only be gained by doing an optional quest during the Save Kid path. So yeah... On the brightside, she's the third character that actually has a steal ability and she even gets a special dual tech with Kid.

Is the boss fight with Harle a Nikki route thing? I don't remember that at all. I thought you just fought ZOAH and Marcy like usual.
I don't believe so, you don't fight her at Viper Manor, you deal with her at the Burned Down Hermit's Hideaway. If you go there first as Glenn tells you to do before heading towards Ft. Dragonia and dealing with Fargo and the Ghost ship, you'll meet her at the place where she tells you she was ordered to delay your pursuit of Lynx. She's pretty easy, but she has some really good loot, namely the upgraded White spell Photon Beam or very rarely, she drops an accessory called Moon Glasses which reduces all damage by 25%.

I remember back when I was first playing CC there was a poster elsewhere who challenged that that Serge just had no motivation to do anything. Like, why is he going after Lynx? What is driving him? My answer then is the same as the one I have now; Serge clearly has feelings for Kid (even if you refuse her at all opportunities, which is a strange design decision and maybe even a bad one but whatever) and he's also probably just curious about why this evil cat-man knows him and what all that stuff he said meant. Plus, lynx had already sent goons after him so Serge probably figured he had to go on the offensive.

I partially disagree, from where I am at the beginning, it seems to me that Serge is trying to figure out the vision he was given when he touched the Dragon Tear at Viper's Manor which showed him his memories of Chronopolis transforming into the Dead Sea in his timeline after he became the arbiter. Not to mention Lynx's words about him being the Chrono Trigger. I say this because Serge will show both memories again after you save Kid and she asks you whether you wanted to stick around or head back to your home dimension.

The partial part comes in the fact that if you do keep Kid around, it's obvious she has a thing for him, and the game's true ending shows that the two of them did wind up together based on the picture on the mantle where Kid's diary is. So I would assume Serge's feelings were mutual.

Funny enough, one of the few optional endings I remember from this game which I enjoyed is the one where Serge decides that it doesn't matter that he's in a dimension he died in, blows off Kid, and ends up hooking up with Another World's Leena and running a shop with her in Termina. It was a pretty funny ending. The other ending he has involves him kind of hooking up with Harle in his Lynx form cause he gives up on trying to get his original body back. So funny enough, Serge is a bit more of a player than one would think.

I still found more personality in Serge than Crono but that's because I largely just find the Twerp Trio of CT to be the worst part of teh game. Magus and Frog are the best characters because they have the strongest motivations, personality, backstory, etc.. And I think I might replay CT after I'm done with CC, dunno yet.

You should play it again, cause well I love the game. Honestly, I find Crono and companies motivation to be pretty iron clad as well since I would imagine that if I stumbled upon time travel and then saw a post-apocalyptic future the world would eventually become, I would likely imagine I would see if I could prevent it as well. I mean even though none of them would live to see it, I imagine it would be hard to go back to living a normal life, knowing a future you were physically at is inevitable.

I beat Dario. I remembered the trick of how he counters certain Elements with Debuffs so he could potentially never even attack you. I made some use of it but I didn't break the whole fight that way. I mainly just used BatEye on him and he counters with LoRes.
But I remembered why I hate Riddel and think she's overrated. You have to use her for this fight and she can't take a single damned hit.

She can take more punishment if you use her a lot once she's recruited to get the extra HP boosts after Star Levels, and due to being a White innate as well as a squishy mage, it's not hard to see how even Dario's weakest attacks can one-shot her seeing how he's the strongest Black Innate Boss in the game who can easily finish off most of your party.

Oh and I found the terminal on Lavos in Chronopolis. It's on 3F which is optional and I missed my first time. I love Chronopolis because it feels appropriately climactic and important, ya know? Good music and design, too. But the showdown with FATE is very unsatisfying. Especially when you learn the identify of Lynx later on. This is teh Goddess who has been controlling everyone, ruining innumerable lives, and it just becomes a big...dinosaur thing and then dies and we move onto the Dragons.

Yeah, the plot twist concerning the Reptite equivalent of Chronopolis showing up is neat at first, but it fails to feel like the pen-ultimate final dungeon like Chronopolis did. I honestly feel like both scenarios should have been switched since I feel like more plot relevant things happen in Chronopolis and Terra Tower feels more like tying up loose ends in the plot before the info dump true ending. I feel like CC was rushed as the second half of the game doesn't feel quite as solid as the first half. Maybe another sign of the Xenogears spirit attaching itself to the project.

Also more Kato loves Xenogears: Evil entity possesses Hero's Father who possesses his own son's body.

I honestly think Xenogears broke Kato. It's influence on CC is very strong.

Long before I played either Chrono game I heard a debate about whether or not you even needed to play Trigger before Cross. Many people played Cross with little or no knowledge of Trigger.

Well, I've settled the dispute of whether or not you need to play Trigger before Cross in order to appreciate it.

I played CT a few years ago but holy smurfing trout, I did not rememberLucca's mother's name. And if you don't remember her name, you cannot do the Code to get Kid's Level 7 Tech. The game helpfully reminds you that Lucca's dad's name is Taban but WHO smurfING CARES.

It drove me mad, I ran around the orpahange, ruining the otherwise perfect atmosphere and storytelling, all because I was madly searching for some clue about what the smurf her mom's name was. I eventually gave upt and just looked it up.

But there you have it. If you like Kid and want her to be at her best, I hope you played Chrono Trigger. And recently so you remember the name of a minor NPC. The scene with rescuing Lucca's mother is like the best moment in the whole game in terms of writing but hell ifI could remember the name. I don't think that's my fault and it certainly wouldn't be the fault of anyone who didn't even play Chrono Trigger.

I'm being mostly facetious here, I'm just really irritated. I hate when games do strout like this

It helps to remember that it's the only normal girls name you can spell with an SNES controller since the big issue when the first game did this puzzle was realizing how to input the password into the computer since no menu prompt appears to input a name. Not helped by the only other puzzle like this was all the way back in the beginning to the game the first time through 2300 A.D.

Honestly, there are so many callbacks to CT that's its hard to argue that CC is a much richer game for having knowledge of CT in it. Not to mention that the whole Reptite versus Human's shenanigans, and who Kid really is and why that's significant, is all lost on you if you never played CT.

EDIT:

I do have to wonder a couple things though.

1. What happens if you leave Kid in a coma? I suppose it's sort of like the Hydra poison and she'd just get better anyway so the ending still works? Although if you did leave Kid alone it totally saps the ending of any emotion in my view.

I don't think it's possibly to not help Kid. I'm pretty sure it's one of the game's few But Thou Must moments in the game where even if you try to not do it, someone tells you you have to.

2. I wonder if there were Shipping Wars back in the day where people got mad Crono ended up with the superior option Marle?

I generally preferred Lucca over Marle since Marle is a bit too pushy for my taste and Lucca is basically Washu from Tenchi Muyo! without the lolicon aspect. Still, I don't think there was any real shipping issues because CT makes it damn clear Marle is Crono's companion, even before the animated Wedding ending in the PS1 version. Partly because the person who does the most talking during the Resurrection scene is based on an algortithm of most important, with Marle getting priority over Lucca and neither Ayla or Magus are even in the algortithm. The other evidence is the balloon ending, where if you crash the Epoch into Lavos and lose it during the final battle, the ending that plays out is one where Crono and Marle foat through the night sky together with the help of some balloons, and the final nail in the coffin is that Marle's Theme is actually titled "Crono and Marle ~ A Distant Promise" which is reprised at the end of the game's ending theme, the underrated "To Far Away Times (The Outskirts of Time)".

So I don't think there are too many shipping issues in CT as there could be in CC. I think even Lucca realizes she's the unlucky childhood friend pretty early in the game sometime around the time they rescue Marle in 600 A.D. The more squicky fanfiction takes to heart the mistranslation in the original english text about Magus and Schala's not being related by blood (they are) and tend to ship them together.

75136

Forsaken Lover

03-17-2018, 08:18 AM

That pic is pretty adorable, gonna steal it.

And I remember some of CC's optional endings pretty vividly. I didn't get all of them myself but I watched t hem on YT. I remember being really frustrated at almost getting the ending where you solo the Time Devourer with Serge. It's mostly easy but it takes forever and eventually something happened and killed me. I wasn't that great at the game, I like to think Ive improved and could do it now (in the regular game, the mod probably wouldn't allow it).

But anyway, the endings are pretty great, We were talking about Serge's motivations. Well, one ending has Serge, Kid and Razzly joining the Magical Dreamers to rock out and a bewildered Lynx standing at the top of Fort Dragonia wondering where everybody is. Another ending has Kid taking over Acacia and the world. I think that's the one where Serge works at the Termina shop.

Overall, both pretty happy endings, I think.

I just beat the Dragon God mystifyingly named the Time Devourer. First run went very smoothly until the Black phase where it combo'ed Genius + Imbecile + Imbecile and finishing it off with BlackHole. Whole party wiped in an instant. For Round 2 my strategy was to get through the phase as fast as possible so I put Vigora and EagleEye on Serge and had him go crazy. Even got one crit for 900 damage in one attack. Once I got through that it was smooth sailing.

I save stated right after the boss because I'm very tired and want to be alert for the info dumps to come. I love this game but I recall the ending being...not very good. It makes you long for Xenogears which had the infamous Second Disk but still wrapped things up far more satisfyingly to my mind.

Oh and I totally skipped that Harle boss fight. I didn't know it existed.

Wolf Kanno

03-17-2018, 09:48 AM

Yeah there is a ton of easily missed things in this game.

Okay one of the few places where I'm going to honestly say CT was better than CC is how static the NPCs can often be. Specifically the MC's mothers. Serge's mom is still scolding me about sleeping in late and how my relationship with Leena is, despite having Leena in my party... I'm like halfway through the fist disc at this point and I kind of remember her being a really flat character overall despite there being enough family drama in the background to make you feel like they would do more. Contrast this with Crono's mom who scolds you for sleeping in late, just about has a heart attack when you finally come home after being trialed as an enemy of the state, and even talks about the Black Omen when it shows up. She then gets unique dialogue the first time you bring in any party member who just joined you. Despite having no real backstory beyond being Crono's mom, she has a bit more personality and presence in the story, so far as being rather prominent in one of the game's final endings.

Serge's Mom isn't the only problem, I also find it weird having Leena's sister ask Serge to help make her sister not so much of a selfish bitch and you get nothing new from her or AW Leena if she's in your active party. Seems like some lost potential there. I know it's asking a lot especially when you think about the sheer amount of optional content and scenarios this game gives you which gives this game way more replay value than CT, but it still would have been nice to just add one or two lines of dialogue.

As for my file, I finished the Ghost ship scenario, got my two extra pieces of dialogue with Fargo since Nikki was in my party, and was told to seek the Water Dragon God's help. WDG no longer exists in Another World, so off to Home World to see how all my actions in the Hydra Marshes were not going to have any long term repercussions against me or innocent bystanders. So I stopped off at Termina first and decided to use all this damn Iron I farmed from the Skeletons to finally upgrade a good chunk of my team into some modern equipment. This very likely helped me a lot considering I was going to use Razzly for this part.

Genocided the genocidal dwarves and even blew up their tank that is always surprisingly more dangerous than you would think depsite how goofy the whole fight feels. This whole scenario easily stands out in the game due to just how surreal the whole scenario is with juxtaposition due to the cutesy graphics and critters, versus the heavy handed ethical scenario.

Due to not bringing Razzly into the Hydra battle, I ensured her sister would die for maximum drama and in order to unlock Razzly's Lv. 7 Tech when the time comes. Again, altruism gets you nowhere in this game. I also was able to collect the last of Skelly's parts after taking a quick jump over to the Island of the Damned to grab the last pieces, did his scenario in Termina and now I have a slightly better melee option for Black Innate. Oh and I got Pip as well, but I'm probably going to ignore him until NG+.

For now, I feel my team is going to be Serge, Kid, and either Leena or Razzly. as a mage character. Sadly, if Kid didn't have Pilfer, I would probably drop her for Greco since I prefer having two heavy fighters on my team. While I'm pretty cool with these four, it's kind of making me realize how many of the better characters there are in some of the other scenarios. My selection of characters is hardly ideal at the moment. I have no decent Red or Yellow Innate Mages, and frankly I have no real options for Yellow innate overall. I have one decent melee fighter that isn't Serge, no good Black Innate with the slight exception of Luccia but even she's kind of mediocre compared to the power trio of Lynx, Harle, and Grobyc. I have way too many Blue Innate and most of them are average at best compared to heavy hitters Fargo and Irenes who are still away off from joining. I finally have a Green Innate and they are pretty awesome, but she's hardly the best of her class sadly. It's like the game front-loaded most of the average novelty characters into the first half. I'm getting excited to become Lynx so I can finally start recruiting characters I like and are actually relevant to the plot.

Forsaken Lover

03-17-2018, 07:23 PM

I'm curious WK, who is your favorite character in this game in terms of character(Not gameplay or whatever)

In any event, I have attained victory at last. I just want to give myself a little pat on he back for figuring out the "Elemental Code." When I first played CC I just looked it up but this time I paid very close attention. The order of the guardian bosses in Terra Tower, the order in which the Dragon God attacks and the order of its forms all go:
Yellow > Red > Green > Blue > Black > White

And this was it. So I'm happy I figured that out, although I won't disagree with people when they say this is all pretty BS and first time players won't have a clue.

But man...the Time Devourer in this mod. My dream team was Serge, Irenes and Leah. If the Time Devourer starts with Tornado or Carnivore, you die. End of story. Even with Diminish its Omega attacks do 700+ damage. OmegaGreen hitting Leah without Diminish does over a 1000 damage. You have to pray it uses weaker single attacks. It's also obscenely fast.

After a lot of trial and error, I figured out the strategy to victory. As i said, Blue Innate is Best Innate. Put two Dreamer Scarves on Serge, use two Level 3 Attacks to build up to Elemental Level 8. Then Irenes puts Vigora on him. Immediately after the Time Devourer kills poor Leah, have Serge use Level 1 Elements of every type. smurf me if I know how you're supposed to win this fight any other way. Do you still gain Star Ranks in New GamePlus? Like I can just keep building Serge's stats and stuff in the next playthrough until he has 999 HP and whatnot? That's about the only way I can think of beating this monster.

But yeah...it's over! Nearly 80 hours and all of it thoroughly enjoyable. I gotta tell you, this game's battle system is probably my favorite in any JRPG. After playing XDenogears, it's really night-and-day in terms of enjoying the combat. The dungeons are also of course way better(and have actual music).

CC's ending is as rushed as ever but I still find the part with the Chrono Cross freeing Schala to be quite beautiful. I just wish the game had built up to this more. The reason a lot of people say you can play Cross with zero knowledge of Trigger is because the Schala stuff is just so last minute. A lot of the CT connections are sparse or last minute. A lot - maybe even the majority - of CC's plot functions perfectly well with not having played Trigger. Bringing it back to Xenogears for a second, the ending with Schala really has the "timeless romance" idea of Fei and Elly but now with Serge and Schala. But it wasn't really built up over the entire game so as sweet as it is, and as much as I love Serge/Kid, it could have been done better.

But, in spite of my second run having me discover new gripes, I still love this game. It's nowhere near perfect but the foaming hatred for it will never make sense to me.

Now to begin my second run of Chrono Trigger. I'll be playing the SNES version this time because there's a difficulty mod for it.

EDIT:

There are also apparently superbosses somewhere but I never found them in either playthrough. I'll probably leave them be for now. 80 hours is about my limit for a game, even ones I like a lot.

Edit:

Crono is the worst boyfriend ever. His first meeting with Marle and what does he do? Drag her off to fight a robot a billion times so he can bo buya nice new sword and armor for himself!

At least I looked t up and found the $4000 isn't worth it and you can go get a much cheaper but still good sword and armor from...Porre?! Well fuck, burn the place down, Crono! Save the future!

But yeah I got my nice new Steel Saber and Bronze Mail so hopefully that will help me on my hard mod journey. I'm also playing on Wait because I'm not that good.

Wolf Kanno

03-18-2018, 05:42 AM

I'm curious WK, who is your favorite character in this game in terms of character(Not gameplay or whatever)

If I'm going to be honest, no one really. CC's cast has never grabbed me like other RPGs and I'm fairly indifferent to most of the cast. With a bit of reflection, I like Harle cause I find her fun and she's got a cute personality. I like Glenn, Karsh, and Raidan for their parts in the Masemune story, but I'm not exactly invested in them as people, it's just my favorite scenario in the game. Pierre makes me laugh, and I have a soft spot for Lenna since I like the fact her Another World version is a bit softer compared to Serge's version. I also have a soft spot for Guile since he used to be Magus and I love the to still pretend Magus did end up being some stage magician. I like Skelly's quest, even if he's a lousy party member, and I like Norris.

With that said, I'm largely indifferent to the cast outside of gameplay parameters. None of them really made me care for them, and it's honestly trying to unravel the mystery of the island and why Serge is important that keeps me invested in the plot. Despite playing the game several times, I only ever remember the parts that deal with the main plot concerning Serge, Kid, and Lynx; as well as the Masemune. The rest of the story which usually involves the other characters, never retains in my memory cause I simply don't care enough.

But yeah...it's over! Nearly 80 hours and all of it thoroughly enjoyable. I gotta tell you, this game's battle system is probably my favorite in any JRPG. After playing XDenogears, it's really night-and-day in terms of enjoying the combat. The dungeons are also of course way better(and have actual music).

I don't think I will ever understand your love for this battle system. Combat is such a drag for me in this game and I would probably be farther into the game if I didn't keep distracting myself with the manga/graphic novels I'm reading during the gameplay portions. With that said, I will agree that the dungeons are fun when combat isn't excessive.

CC's ending is as rushed as ever but I still find the part with the Chrono Cross freeing Schala to be quite beautiful. I just wish the game had built up to this more. The reason a lot of people say you can play Cross with zero knowledge of Trigger is because the Schala stuff is just so last minute. A lot of the CT connections are sparse or last minute. A lot - maybe even the majority - of CC's plot functions perfectly well with not having played Trigger. Bringing it back to Xenogears for a second, the ending with Schala really has the "timeless romance" idea of Fei and Elly but now with Serge and Schala. But it wasn't really built up over the entire game so as sweet as it is, and as much as I love Serge/Kid, it could have been done better.

CC still has a pretty good ending, I think my issue with Serge and Kid's relationship is that it does feel forced and since you have the option to ignore her, it feels out of place due to choices. Strangled by the Red String indeed.

There are also apparently superbosses somewhere but I never found them in either playthrough. I'll probably leave them be for now. 80 hours is about my limit for a game, even ones I like a lot.

Dario is considered one of them, but the more traditional, one is the weird boss you can fight on the Yellow Dragon's isle. He's interesting cause his fight involves answering questions and there is no story justification for him whatsoever.

Wolf Kanno

03-18-2018, 06:50 PM

Finished Mt. Pyre, which is a weird and annoying dungeon. The annoying part is the treasure chests in the lava that you have to open before using the Water Dragon's Ice Breath or they can't be reached anymore. Had to reset the game to fix that issue and I'm pretty sure I do this every freaking playthrough.

The weird part is just the odd boss gauntlets in this place. I mean Solt and Peppor are understandable since they're a tutorial, and I must say they are some of the game's more fun characters. The awkward part was getting challenged by the Fire/Red Dragon out of nowhere and then being immediately attacked by the three Devas. I just kind of feel like this could have been spaced out a bit better, especially since this place is kind of small.

On the flip side, I've been playing around with my token summon to retrieve materials for Rainbow weapons. I'm going to try to be a bit more open minded about them and trap elements. I also reached Star Level 15, meaning I've gained most of my party's Lv. 2 Techs! Except for Nikki, cause he's a fucking prima donna and doesn't get his for another four Star Levels apparently...

Next up is Ft. Dragonia and some serious gaming and story shenanigans.

Forsaken Lover

03-18-2018, 09:51 PM

I thinkwe just come from two different worlds. You thought Persona 2 had a good battle system, didn't you? I don't think I know anybody but you and Fynn who feels that way.

Chrono Cross' battle system is involved and more strategic than most turn-based battle systems, especially before melee rules supreme. Monitoring field effect so you gain the most out of your Elements/take the least damage from enemy Elements, measuring Stamina so you use certain attacks from characters at certain points, perhaps starting a Combo with Character A then heading to Character C to attack some more so Character A gets all their Stamina back, factoring in Innates instead of just typical "Character A has these stats and Character B has these stats" - all this and more is why I love CC's battle system.

Also if you need Shiny materials, there is also this strategy:
https://chaos2.org/ff/cc/shiny.shtml

The Elemental Charms aren't as special as I thought and can all be easily stolen. Angel Charms and thus Shiny Salts are the hardest to come by since only an enemy in Terra Tower drops them. But you'll find one Angel Charm in Dragonia as I recall plus there's the Energizer Suit in one of the Hermit Hideaways which can also be Disassembled for a Shiny Salt.

So my playthrough of Trigger is coming along. I was found not guilty this time for all the good it did me. Also I just realized that it was Melchior I tried to sell Marle's Pendant too and it's because he asked for it. I never thought about the significance of this last time.

The music in this game is pretty great, especially the World Map Music for...1000AD is
the Home Era of our hero I think?

I'm really bad at the timeline. Like, I think Chrono Cross takes place only a few years after CT's "main" time?

Wolf Kanno

03-19-2018, 05:01 AM

I think we just come from two different worlds. You thought Persona 2 had a good battle system, didn't you? I don't think I know anybody but you and Fynn who feels that way.

I honestly don't know too many people who dislike P2's battle system. ;)

Chrono Cross' battle system is involved and more strategic than most turn-based battle systems, especially before melee rules supreme. Monitoring field effect so you gain the most out of your Elements/take the least damage from enemy Elements, measuring Stamina so you use certain attacks from characters at certain points, perhaps starting a Combo with Character A then heading to Character C to attack some more so Character A gets all their Stamina back, factoring in Innates instead of just typical "Character A has these stats and Character B has these stats" - all this and more is why I love CC's battle system.

I agree that the Field Elements add a lot of strategic value, but I often feel it works best defensively. I don't pay too much attention to innate element without looking at stats first. This is especially noticeable in my current playthrough as I can often get better results exploiting elemental weaknesses using a magic build character using the element than constantly shuffling around my team. There are also just some elements where I don't feel there are any exceptional members of it, specifically Red and Yellow. I mean honestly, if characters like Kid, Fargo, and Mel didn't have useful techs, I would never use them. Lenna has some very useful techs, but her stats are middling so I will likely drop her for another character. If I had played as I usually did and got Guile and Glenn, I would never let them leave my party except when the game forces me to because their better stats and combat focus trump any advantage the Innate element mechanics give. It's a large part of my dislike of the system because I find most of it superfluous. A smaller cast with more role based focus in their stats and skills would have made this game more fun for me.

The Stamina recovery element would be more practical if they were more extreme. As it stands, I can easily have all three party members do one of each physical attack and end with a magic attack/tech skill and easily cycle through the whole party. The stamina mechanic and element mechanic would have been more interesting if higher tier elements required Stamina use like melee does, forcing you to have to have to rely on one or the other mechanic. As it stands, I can largely get my cake and eat it too with my party averaging four attacks per character. It's only when I steal that things change and even then it just slows down regular battles. Like most JRPG's with convoluted but easily exploited systems, boss battles are about the only place where the mechanics shine but the random battles are a chore. This is where I can appreciate Xenogears simple brain dead regular battles cause at least they are over quickly and I can move on. Cross' battles require too much focus but are hardly interesting which makes the gameplay a chore for me. Not helping is how the leveling system itself largely discourages grinding outside of materials for smithing, it's almost like the game is telling me to run from battles and go out of my way to avoid combat as much as possible and it all just feels counter-intuitive to me in terms of what a game should be.

It's hardly the worst system but it's all so sloppy and I feel the sheer amount of mechanics are there to distract players on how simple and straightforward the gameplay really is.

Also if you need Shiny materials, there is also this strategy:
https://chaos2.org/ff/cc/shiny.shtml

Ooh, that will come in handy, thanks.

The Elemental Charms aren't as special as I thought and can all be easily stolen. Angel Charms and thus Shiny Salts are the hardest to come by since only an enemy in Terra Tower drops them. But you'll find one Angel Charm in Dragonia as I recall plus there's the Energizer Suit in one of the Hermit Hideaways which can also be Disassembled for a Shiny Salt.

I'm not too concerned with outfitting everyone. I usually only make three of each Mail type and only make the weapons of characters I plan to use, so that saves me some time and money.

So my playthrough of Trigger is coming along. I was found not guilty this time for all the good it did me. Also I just realized that it was Melchior I tried to sell Marle's Pendant too and it's because he asked for it. I never thought about the significance of this last time.

Oh yeah, you run into a lot of call forwards if you pay attention. If you go to the shop in Crono's village and one of the boating docks, you'll learn about the missing shop keeper's son you can rescue later when you're escaping the prison. I still feel the Millennial Fair/Crono Trial is one of the most clever parts of the game

The music in this game is pretty great, especially the World Map Music for...1000AD is
the Home Era of our hero I think?

Actually it's Schala's Another World era. Serge's timeline is the rogue timeline trying to overwrite the main one.

I'm really bad at the timeline. Like, I think Chrono Cross takes place only a few years after CT's "main" time?

Cross takes place in the year 1020AD. Twenty years after the events of CT. The timeline is divided in 1010AD when Kid would time travel back from 1020 AD and save him from drowning. Granted, CC is kind of fuzzy about how this dimensional split exists when it also basically says that any time a time travel changes history, it causes the old timeline to enter a garbage dump of other timelines. Though I guess the Time Crash and/or the presence of the Frozen Flame somehow allows for these alternate timelines to still exist parallel to the main one.

Forsaken Lover

03-19-2018, 08:25 AM

Wolf Kanno

03-19-2018, 07:50 PM

I honestly don't know too many people who dislike P2's battle system. ;)

It's why nobody plays it and why IS on the PSP failed so hard we never got EP PSP. Also why fans of Persona start with 3 and just go from there. It's not because they're dumb and don't think "what about 1 and 2?" But nobody in good conscience can recommend those games because the battle systems. I love InnocentSin but I'd almost just recommend watching a walkthrough on YT.

Honestly it looks like Nocturne was the first Atlus game that is actually fun to play. Everything else has aged like moldy cheese.

And I see what you mean about random battles being a bit annoying and tedious. That was definitely a problem at times.

This will have to be a debate for another time, but honestly, I don't see too many people whine about P2's battle system and I hardly feel it was the issue at hand and not because it was released on a platform that always struggled to keep up with Nintendo's handheld.

As for the timeline stuff, one area I got confused at was how the "split" only took place ten years ago which means everything else should be the same.Like, Radius killing Garai should be a universal fact among both timelines. Also I guess there are two Masamunes although now I think on it we only see the Home one... But it was Another Karsh who attacked his Dario while it's Home Dario we run into... Hm.

The split makes sense to me, it just seems weird that as something that changed history, Another World wasn't sent to the Darkness Beyond Time like all other discarded timelines. I mean a big part of CC's plot is concerned about explaining that this is the reason why time travel can be be morally reprehensible, but then it also softens the blow cause apparently beings from these discarded timelines can not only become aware they're from a discarded timeline but can some how still interact with the new timeline such as what Lavos did. The only justification I can think of is the concept of a multiverse and thus natural splits in the timeline such as a timeline where Lavos never showed up and the Reptite's won the war against primitive man can exist in an alternate timeline, but when you actually start physically changing history through time travel, it causes the discarded future events to go to the DBT. While that makes sense to me, it still wouldn't solve the issue of Kid causing the split timeline by saving Serge as it would still mean that Another World should have been sent to the DBT, but it would also likely mean that things like the Dead Sea wouldn't happen because Sege's life being saved shouldn't really change Crono and his team's actions in the first game.

I'm going to have to take extra special attention when I get to the Dead Sea and Chronopolis to see if there is an explanation for this paradox. As it stands, the only way I can see it working out is if FATE and Chronopolis' research into controlling time somehow allowed them to stabilize their timeline and prevent it from going to DBT and shifted Home World into a pocket dimension that works like one of these natural alternate dimension/timelines.

Speaking of which, I just got to 2300 AD and I still find it odd that the first arc of teh game is "time travel made everything worse!" and then the next thing is "we must time travel to make everything better!"

I wouldn't say it was about making things worse, just more about showing how time travel can be dangerous if you muck up your own history.

Also I adore Marle's little "yipee!" victory animation. I had forgotten about that. Also forgot Marle isn't even her name. I guess I know what Nadia's Bell was named after now. The bell which will never ring again. DO YOU FEEL BAD YET?

Yeah CT takes on some darker tones when you play it again after CC. One thing I did like about CC is that it made Ayla's arc way more interesting.

I talked about my playthrough elsewhere and one surprising complaint I saw about CC is people saying it had a smaller scope than Trigger. Because it all takes place in one tiny archipelago and only gets major in the last couple arcs. That is a baffling complaint to me since don't the Gates just transport the CT heroes to the exact same places but in different times? You're just seeing Guardia - or the land that was or will beGuardia -again and again and again.

You eventually travel the whole world, and the Gates are all over the place. It is interesting to see how much places change over the years. I think what the complainers are annoyed about with CC is that so much stuff seems to be going on over on the Zenan Continent, and yet due to plot reasons, you never really venture out of El Nido except when you fall into Dimensional Vortex and when Serge travels into Kid's past to save her.

CT let's you see the whole world, but many of the eras are fairly homogeneous within the context of their era, but CC has a denser culture since a big theme of the game is dealing with racial and cultural clashes. Crono's timeline has the whole Humans vs. Mystics thing, but outside of the Mystics being bitter about the war in 600AD before you change things around, its a one sided issue whereas it's pretty obvious in CC's world that Humans and Demi-Humans have some serious issues with each other.

Also Dragons are a thing in CC but apparently not in CT. Only dragon there was the tank I just beat up.
If memory serves me correctly, the Dragons ended up being the Reptite's equivalent of FATE in their alternate timeline where Terra Tower exists. FATE defeated it and then split them into six pieces to better control them. Then they created Harle as a seventh Dragon in order to have a means of manipulating FATE/Lynx's plan in order to restore themselves. Course all of this ends up being somewhat moot, cause not only are the Dragonians extinct by CC's time, whom the Dragons were the ward for, but the Dragons have become corrupted by the Time Devourer/Lavos so they're just causing problems for the sake of causing problems.

*********************************************************************************************
In my own playthrough, I finished Ft. Dragonia and completely forgot how many bosses were in that place. As usual, I had issues with the Yellow elemental puzzle cause the game never tells you how Select let's you change your party order. I also still vehemently hate the Sun boss cause that guy is so tanky and hits like a truck. Not to mention when he just gets two to three turns in a row that all change the elemental field. I'm also reminded why I dislike the "Change Innate Element" elements cause like most status magic, bosses get immunity. Would have made that fight easier if I could change the bosses element to black.

I decided that the whole Serge stabs Kid CGI must have taken up a lot of the team's resources because they show it like three to four times in the first half of the game and by god the team will get their full use of that scene!

I've only been Lynx for a little while and I'm already liking the scenario much better. The gauntlet of bosses skyrocketed my level so Lynx feels significantly stronger than Serge despite having the same stats, and frankly, Lynx starts off with the ability to build a much stronger team than poor Serge does if you make too many bad choices like I did. Harle lacks Kid's Pilfer ability, and it's annoying she's the same element as Lynx, but she is a much more competent fighter and her two personal Techs are extremely good.

Sprigg always surprises me, and she's a far better example of a novelty character done right. She's not annoying and she plays uniquely with her shape shifting skills. She's an interesting take on Gau honestly, and it's fun keeping her in the party to build up her monster repertoire despite my favorite monsters being relegated to NG+. Radius is also much better than I give him credit for, with the exception of his low health, he can take and dish a good beating. I'm starting to think the Devs were bias in regards of the Green Element cause it just seems to me like all of the game's best or most interesting party members share this element. Karsh, Glenn, Radius, Razzly, Sprigg, and even that freaking Turnip are interesting and damn good party members.

I'm off to Termina, but I'm stopping by a few places to gain more doppelganger forms for Sprigg since I forgot she learns the form of any monster she beats. The Forget-Me-Not-Pot simply allows other characters to do this for her as well.

Forsaken Lover

03-19-2018, 08:16 PM

This will have to be a debate for another time, but honestly, I don't see too many people whine about P2's battle system and I hardly feel it was the issue at hand and not because it was released on a platform that always struggled to keep up with Nintendo's handheld.

Fair enough. We are apparently the exceptions to each other's experience which is very peculiar. I know "it's just like your opinion man" but it's still weird you have literally never seen anyone talk about how tedious Card collecting and Negotiating is, especially in IS where everybody has four Negotiation options. The Encounter Rate was also obscene.

The split makes sense to me, it just seems weird that as something that changed history, Another World wasn't sent to the Darkness Beyond Time like all other discarded timelines. I mean a big part of CC's plot is concerned about explaining that this is the reason why time travel can be be morally reprehensible, but then it also softens the blow cause apparently beings from these discarded timelines can not only become aware they're from a discarded timeline but can some how still interact with the new timeline such as what Lavos did. The only justification I can think of is the concept of a multiverse and thus natural splits in the timeline such as a timeline where Lavos never showed up and the Reptite's won the war against primitive man can exist in an alternate timeline, but when you actually start physically changing history through time travel, it causes the discarded future events to go to the DBT. While that makes sense to me, it still wouldn't solve the issue of Kid causing the split timeline by saving Serge as it would still mean that Another World should have been sent to the DBT, but it would also likely mean that things like the Dead Sea wouldn't happen because Sege's life being saved shouldn't really change Crono and his team's actions in the first game.

I'm going to have to take extra special attention when I get to the Dead Sea and Chronopolis to see if there is an explanation for this paradox. As it stands, the only way I can see it working out is if FATE and Chronopolis' research into controlling time somehow allowed them to stabilize their timeline and prevent it from going to DBT and shifted Home World into a pocket dimension that works like one of these natural alternate dimension/timelines.

There's definitely a multiverse. I think I totally missed this my first run but in Chronopolis you find a terminal that talks about Radical Dreamers and the heroes even say this is a third universe. There were also multipleMaguses in the special DS ending so far as I recall.

But FATE specifically monitors both universes according to the Chronopolis phantoms. Remember the Dragon Gods are also all encountered across both Home and Another World even though they fuse and create Terra Tower in Another World. And destroying the Dead Sea in Home effects it in Another. The two universes just seem to be totally connected which is presumably why you can travel from one to another but theAmulet wouldn't let you go to, say, Radical Dreamers.

Speaking of which, I just got to 2300 AD and I still find it odd that the first arc of teh game is "time travel made everything worse!" and then the next thing is "we must time travel to make everything better!"

I wouldn't say it was about making things worse, just more about showing how time travel can be dangerous if you muck up your own history.

Also I adore Marle's little "yipee!" victory animation. I had forgotten about that. Also forgot Marle isn't even her name. I guess I know what Nadia's Bell was named after now. The bell which will never ring again. DO YOU FEEL BAD YET?

Yeah CT takes on some darker tones when you play it again after CC. One thing I did like about CC is that it made Ayla's arc way more interesting.

CT let's you see the whole world, but many of the eras are fairly homogeneous within the context of their era, but CC has a denser culture since a big theme of the game is dealing with racial and cultural clashes. Crono's timeline has the whole Humans vs. Mystics thing, but outside of the Mystics being bitter about the war in 600AD before you change things around, its a one sided issue whereas it's pretty obvious in CC's world that Humans and Demi-Humans have some serious issues with each other.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised you don't hate the Dwarves. Everybody hates the Dwarves and says the attack on Water Dragon Isle is one of CC's biggest storytelling flubs because they think the dwarves are supposed to be presented as voicing the themes of the games and intentions of the writers.

If memory serves me correctly, the Dragons ended up being the Reptite's equivalent of FATE in their alternate timeline where Terra Tower exists. FATE defeated it and then split them into six pieces to better control them. Then they created Harle as a seventh Dragon in order to have a means of manipulating FATE/Lynx's plan in order to restore themselves. Course all of this ends up being somewhat moot, cause not only are the Dragonians extinct by CC's time, whom the Dragons were the ward for, but the Dragons have become corrupted by the Time Devourer/Lavos so they're just causing problems for the sake of causing problems.

There are normal dragons too though like Draggy and the ones you feed at Viper Manor. That's what I meant.

In my own playthrough, I finished Ft. Dragonia and completely forgot how many bosses were in that place. As usual, I had issues with the Yellow elemental puzzle cause the game never tells you how Select let's you change your party order. I also still vehemently hate the Sun boss cause that guy is so tanky and hits like a truck. Not to mention when he just gets two to three turns in a row that all change the elemental field. I'm also reminded why I dislike the "Change Innate Element" elements cause like most status magic, bosses get immunity. Would have made that fight easier if I could change the bosses element to black.

Huh, I never figured out Select was how you did that. I just ran back and forth to the Record of Fate and changed party leaders that way. Good to know for future, thanks.

And that Gun bastard is so weird. As you said, he's just tanky but naturally you see your best moves doing very little so you figure he must have a weakness somewhere and you're just not hitting it. But apparently not. He's just a weirdly strong asshole.

I've only been Lynx for a little while and I'm already liking the scenario much better. The gauntlet of bosses skyrocketed my level so Lynx feels significantly stronger than Serge despite having the same stats, and frankly, Lynx starts off with the ability to build a much stronger team than poor Serge does if you make too many bad choices like I did. Harle lacks Kid's Pilfer ability, and it's annoying she's the same element as Lynx, but she is a much more competent fighter and her two personal Techs are extremely good.

Sprigg always surprises me, and she's a far better example of a novelty character done right. She's not annoying and she plays uniquely with her shape shifting skills. She's an interesting take on Gau honestly, and it's fun keeping her in the party to build up her monster repertoire despite my favorite monsters being relegated to NG+. Radius is also much better than I give him credit for, with the exception of his low health, he can take and dish a good beating. I'm starting to think the Devs were bias in regards of the Green Element cause it just seems to me like all of the game's best or most interesting party members share this element. Karsh, Glenn, Radius, Razzly, Sprigg, and even that freaking Turnip are interesting and damn good party members.

I'm off to Termina, but I'm stopping by a few places to gain more doppelganger forms for Sprigg since I forgot she learns the form of any monster she beats. The Forget-Me-Not-Pot simply allows other characters to do this for her as well.

i really liked using Radius and Norris in my first run. I used them all the way up to Miguel I think. Sprigg is interesting too and I'm looking forward to testing her out more in NG+.

Wolf Kanno

03-20-2018, 05:56 AM

The split makes sense to me, it just seems weird that as something that changed history, Another World wasn't sent to the Darkness Beyond Time like all other discarded timelines. I mean a big part of CC's plot is concerned about explaining that this is the reason why time travel can be be morally reprehensible, but then it also softens the blow cause apparently beings from these discarded timelines can not only become aware they're from a discarded timeline but can some how still interact with the new timeline such as what Lavos did. The only justification I can think of is the concept of a multiverse and thus natural splits in the timeline such as a timeline where Lavos never showed up and the Reptite's won the war against primitive man can exist in an alternate timeline, but when you actually start physically changing history through time travel, it causes the discarded future events to go to the DBT. While that makes sense to me, it still wouldn't solve the issue of Kid causing the split timeline by saving Serge as it would still mean that Another World should have been sent to the DBT, but it would also likely mean that things like the Dead Sea wouldn't happen because Sege's life being saved shouldn't really change Crono and his team's actions in the first game.

I'm going to have to take extra special attention when I get to the Dead Sea and Chronopolis to see if there is an explanation for this paradox. As it stands, the only way I can see it working out is if FATE and Chronopolis' research into controlling time somehow allowed them to stabilize their timeline and prevent it from going to DBT and shifted Home World into a pocket dimension that works like one of these natural alternate dimension/timelines.

There's definitely a multiverse. I think I totally missed this my first run but in Chronopolis you find a terminal that talks about Radical Dreamers and the heroes even say this is a third universe. There were also multiple Maguses in the special DS ending so far as I recall.

But FATE specifically monitors both universes according to the Chronopolis phantoms. Remember the Dragon Gods are also all encountered across both Home and Another World even though they fuse and create Terra Tower in Another World. And destroying the Dead Sea in Home effects it in Another. The two universes just seem to be totally connected which is presumably why you can travel from one to another but the Amulet wouldn't let you go to, say, Radical Dreamers.[/quote]

I guess I should rephrase this, I get that there are alternate realities, what I don't understand is what separates a Dimension like Another World from say, the bad future Crono destroyed and sent to the DBT? It's stated in CC that when a time traveler changes history, the old timeline gets discarded into the DBT, so how is it possible that Another World avoids this fate and instead, Home World becomes becomes a new dimension instead? As far as I can remember, it's either caused by something Chronopolis is doing, or it has something to do with Serge's contact with the Frozen Flame. It's just a weird inconsistency that probably has an answer within the game but I forgot.

CT let's you see the whole world, but many of the eras are fairly homogeneous within the context of their era, but CC has a denser culture since a big theme of the game is dealing with racial and cultural clashes. Crono's timeline has the whole Humans vs. Mystics thing, but outside of the Mystics being bitter about the war in 600AD before you change things around, its a one sided issue whereas it's pretty obvious in CC's world that Humans and Demi-Humans have some serious issues with each other.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised you don't hate the Dwarves. Everybody hates the Dwarves and says the attack on Water Dragon Isle is one of CC's biggest storytelling flubs because they think the dwarves are supposed to be presented as voicing the themes of the games and intentions of the writers.

The Water Dragon Isle section is pretty heavy handed about the themes and I agree with the detractors that it could have been handled better. On the other hand, dealing with the Dwarves in the Hydra Marshes is much better, and I get that Kato was trying to imply that the Dwarves actions on Water Dragon Isle is simply them just doing what humans do. The real issue here is actually the faries basically blaming humans instead of the dwarves. I was actually expecting a bigger scene with Razzly there but didn't quite get what I was hoping for. Again, this is where having a smaller cast that is more involved in the events of the plot would have come in handy.

There are normal dragons too though like Draggy and the ones you feed at Viper Manor. That's what I meant.
It is very likely that Draggy and the Dragon Horses are descended from the Reptite timeline, which is why they are unique to the islands.

Huh, I never figured out Select was how you did that. I just ran back and forth to the Record of Fate and changed party leaders that way. Good to know for future, thanks.

I remember it being a button but usually it's like triangle or something. I didn't want to use the Records of Fate cause that would have gotten tedious.

And that Gun bastard is so weird. As you said, he's just tanky but naturally you see your best moves doing very little so you figure he must have a weakness somewhere and you're just not hitting it. But apparently not. He's just a weirdly strong asshole.

Yeah, as far as I cant tell, his only weakness is his low HP compared to every other boss in the dungeon. The Black and Green Innate bosses had loads of health and I was dishing close to 300hp of damage at times, but I don't think I ever did more than 40hp of damage to this guy, but his battle didn't last any longer than the others. It was just getting annoying how he doesn't take much damage from the one element he was actually weak to.

i really liked using Radius and Norris in my first run. I used them all the way up to Miguel I think. Sprigg is interesting too and I'm looking forward to testing her out more in NG+.

I've always liked Norris cause his story was interesting and he's the first competent Yellow innate that isn't annoying. I still love the fact you get his Lv. 7 Tech from his Another World self. Radius is pretty good as well, it's just his low health makes him a liability at times like the Garia battle or heaven help you if you brought him for the Dario fight. Still, he's a great damage dealer.

Forsaken Lover

03-20-2018, 09:02 AM

I can't really say about why Another World continues to exist apart from my earlier speculation it has to do with FATE and everything else simply anchoring the two universes together. The two universes have parts that are missing from each other and simply aren't "whole" without the other.

Man, I forgot about how Trigger has the worst (in terms of "in-universe perspective") party switching system ever.

Sorry Lucca, I want you to spend all your time alone here in this void of nothingness with only a crazy old man and that magic thing to keep you company. We'll be be back for you eventually maybe. What, take you home and just pick you up from there? That's madness.

Wolf Kanno

03-20-2018, 06:13 PM

^ I always feel bad when I complete 2300AD and get Robo cause I'm like, "Hey Robo, I'm happy I was able to get you out of your terrible timeline and away from your genocidal brothers... BUT the next area features enemies that are extremely weak to Magic and since you don't really have any, I'm going to have to leave you in this bleak creepy place at the end of time with a creepy old man and his bloodthirsty companion. Have fun, I'll be back when I need to go to 65 Million BC!"

In CC news, I had a serious party member collectathon going here. Recruited Van, who I forgot was another Green Innate, but despite never using him much, I do appreciate his story. Picked up Zappa, whom I'll likely never use but hey, I've got better access to a Blacksmith in dungeons now! Norris joined, and he is surprisingly more cooperative than I remember. Despite Porre turning Termina into a police state, the soldiers are not nearly as bad as the rest of the world makes them out to be. Granted, there is more of a carefree atmosphere in Another World and Home World definitely feels like a shittier place than there though, but that's not just because Porre is here. Though listening to comments by the troops and Norris makes me really wonder what's going on in the Zenan Mainland, cause I've noticed several NPCs mention that El Nido is significantly more stable and peaceful than the mainland. Wonder what Dalton is up to?

I had to reset once cause I forgot to spend the night at Marbule to get the extra scene with Irenes. Did my shenanigans on the S.S. Zelbess and was able to recruit Sneff and Irenes. I totally screwed up the Grand Slam cause I made the rookie mistake of forgetting that I can't reuse the same monsters for each battle, so I'll wait for Janice cause I need to recruit some better monsters. I'll be heading to the Dead Sea, except I remembered I'll need to collect the Einhanzer first to deal with the Masemune. While Radius is a must, I'm thinking of doing something novel and putting Zappa in my party since he was a Deva along with Radius and Garai. Maybe I'll get some more dialogue. This goes along with my plan to try more party builds cause I have a really bad habit of just keeping characters like Kid and Harle in my active party all the time. I will probably bring her back on when I do the Dead Sea though, as well as Norris. Mainly cause her Lv. 5 tech may be useful for the battle with Miguel.

Wolf Kanno

03-21-2018, 06:58 PM

I didn't feel like I got too much done last night.

So I went to El Nido Triangle and picked up the Star Fragment for the purpose of recruiting the alien dude. Damn does he have some serious health, took forever to kill him and I'm now realizing this evening that I will need to acquire some Trap Elements cause my current repertoire of spells are incredibly inadequate at this point outside of improved healing.

I actually died to Garai, against my better judgement I put Zappa into my party instead of Harle, and while he's pretty decent against the normal enemies, his large amount of HP is about the only thing he had going for him in the battle. Been ages since I saw the Game Over screen in this game, which is actually kind of cool. My second round had Harle back in and the extra damage and use of Diminish to keep his really powerful Holy attack from one-shotting Lynx and Harle proved the deciding factor for this fight.

Two things came up from this scenario:

1) It's incredibly disappointing how underutilized the cast is in terms of extra dialogue or content when present. Zappa was a fellow Deva with Garia and Radius and yet he gets no extra dialogue or anything concerning the fate of one of his fellow comrades. It just feels like a serious wasted opportunity. This reminded me about how much Luccia pops up in the background of several character stories like Grobyc and her involvement with Fargo and his family trouble, and yet she feels like more of a background character than a lot of the cast when it's obvious she should have been playing a larger role cause she's personally involved in so many people's stories.

2) While the ambiguity of Guardia's fall and the fate of the old cast is interesting for me for speculative purposes, I still really wish CC had addressed how the Masemune became an evil sword and how the hell it came to El Nido, cause both aspects are either never touched upon or have flimsy reasoning behind it. I do find it interesting that the Einlanzer is basically the Dragonian Timeline counterpart to the Masemune which would explain why they are opposing weapons, but I still wish that sword had a bit more history to it like the Masemune does. With all that said, the Masemune's role in CC is still pretty cool and sort of just exemplifies how CC does an interesting job of making you want to know more about what happened in the Chrono-verse.

I've been thinking about the prospect of what I would want out of a third Chrono entry if it somehow ever saw the light of day, and I may do a short write up once I finish this playthrough along with some changes I wish I could see in CC if it ever got the remake treatment.

Anyway, I'll be doing the Dead Sea tonight, which I've been super excited for cause it's one of my favorite parts of the game. I can honestly say that as a narrative, CC really starts to pick up once you become Lynx. The events after Viper Manor up to that point are not quite as interesting as the stuff that follows.

I think one of the most clever things CC does with its story is how it subverts the usual alternate dimension/timeline shenanigans by reversing the reveal. In most stories that deal with these topics, the story let's you follow the perspective characters daily life and see their world in order to build up a baseline so you can see the serious contrast once they leap to the other verse. In CC, Alternate World is explored first and becomes the baseline so when you finally do get a chance to return home and explore it, you get the contrast from the opposite end. Made even more delicious because CC will eventually reveal that Serge's world is the abnormal timeline and the world he stepped into is the actual main timeline. Something really fascinating I noticed while replaying. I may add this observation and few more into the CC entry on my Top 100 list.

Wolf Kanno

03-22-2018, 07:12 PM

The Dead Sea is completed and Serge has returned to Another World only to learn Lynx in his body has started a smear campaign against his good name.

The Dead Sea has always been one of my favorite parts of this game. It's the moment long time Chrono fans realize the connection between both titles, and it's the point that turns the whole franchise on its head. Oddly enough, the place kind of reminded me of Old Milita in the Encephalon Dive in Xenosaga Episode 1 in terms of design and feel. Not surprising I guess. I still find the Ghost Children to be rather chilling aspects of the whole scene and I was happy to have some extra dialogue by bringing Radius along when the party discovers what happened to Lord Viper and his entourage.

The joy of knowing what's coming meant I took down Miguel with little trouble. His whole combat shlick is about abusing elemental weaknesses so Diminish does wonders for this fight. I also simply lucked out and Miguel kept going after Norris and changing his innate element to be weak to his attacks instead of going after the the more dangerous and "low hanging fruit" that was Harle and Lynx.

After that segment, I went to Ft. Dragonia to get Drakky and instantly regretted bot coming here before the Dead Sea because the place is filled with Denodorite, which is needed to make the second to last tier of equipment which would have made that section of the game so much easier. I think I make this mistake every playthrough as well.

As of now, I'm trying to figure out who is going to be in my final party for the last stretch of the game. I mean Fargo is a given since I need a thief, but debating whether I should drop him for Kid when she finally comes back towards the end of the game. Nikki is a no go as well as Korcha, and while I've been loving me some Radius and Norris, part of me wants to wait and see how I feel about Karsh since I remember him being on par with Glenn as a fighter. Probably the only nice aspect of not going my normal route in this game is that I am now forced to really consider who my final party will be.

In truth, CC's cast feels like the early Suikoden games where there are a few outstanding characters, a few absolutely awful ones (though not as bad as Suikoden 1) and the rest are interchangeable and largely middling.

Wolf Kanno

03-23-2018, 07:02 PM

You know, the one issue I do have with games with super large playable casts is when the game dumps like five to ten of them on you at once. Tactical RPGs, Suikoden, and now Chrono Cross, just have some annoying points where like seven people all join up and you only have like two slots to play any of them, Make the experience a bit jarring...

Anyway, I've returned to Another World and rescued local damsel in distress Riddel from her home. This netted me no less than seven new party members including Lord Viper and his entire entourage, Grobyc, Orcha, and Fargo. This is still one of the cooler parts of the game thoughm despite my minor gripe. Now I get to do my least favorite part of the game which is hunting down all of the Dragons. On the brightside, I have fulfilled all the requirement for the Marbule quest so that will be pretty awesome but I generally never cared for fetch quests like these.

One gripe I will bring up for CC is that I feel like the game could have done a better job justifying some of the bosses within it. Like I was kind of dumbfounded within the Hydra Marshes cause the Dragonfly monster nor the Ultros wannabe didn't count as bosses despite being significantly harder than most of the creatures in the area including the actual bosses. Yet the game is filled with bosses for the sake of having them. I was starting to get annoyed in Ft. Dragonia when I kept running into some silly guardian boss. I was more weird out when I had to fight that Robot thing in the Dead Sea, and last night, before I even touched the Orcha fight, I had to fight some giant cockroach thing that came out of nowhere. The game just has too many filler bosses and I get their connected to the leveling system, but I feel like this could have been handled a bit easier and we could remove a few of these fillers. It doesn't make the game feel exciting, it makes it feel padded. Granted, a lot of JRPG do this. It's just been getting annoying having like three or four boss battles in a row and like two of them feel unnecessary for the plot.

I mentioned before how I didn't particularly care for anyone in the plot, but I was actually wrong about that. I completely forgot how much of a soft spot I have for Harle and I was actually moved by here scene with Starky where she laments the fact she has to move forward with her plan despite wanting to stay with Serge and the others. Whereas Kid is emotionally fiery, and thus her emotional swings feel justified, Harle is a character who keeps her feelings in check and to see a scene where she finally shows a vulnerable side is very charming to me. She is also an excellent character to boot and now she's gone from my party...

I have decided that Karsh is a great replacement for Glenn, especially since I believe he's a better mage than him, so he's in the running for my final party; but I'm actually thinking of running with the game's suggestion of Fargo and Lord Viper for the moment. As it stands, depending on how the extra levels have helped her, I may throw Kid back in once she returns to the party, but Fargo may end up replacing her at which point it's either Norris or Karsh to take my third point as the team of Lynx/Karsh/Norris was pretty badass in Viper Manor.

I'm still trying to figure out where the game jumps to the second disc. I thought it happened earlier but I'm down to the last few major quests and I still haven't been prompted yet. I'm also making way better time than I had thought, which is surprisingly since the opposite was happening with my last title Arc the Lad 2. I think I just broke the thirty hour mark in CC and I'm not far from the end, whereas I'm like forty hours into AtL2 and I don't think I'm even a quarter of the way into the game yet. Not complaining here, just a bit surprised and being reminded how long it's been since I really played this game. On the flip side, this file has gone by so fast, I'm tempted to hit NG+ and do a few things in there as well.

Forsaken Lover

03-24-2018, 06:36 AM

Karsh is the man and was part of my original endgame trio.

What does the bit about Lavos in the Dead Sea say? Did you find it?

Also apparently a dead Johnny can be found there which is appropriate since I just got done racing that jerk in my current CT run. (it's going slowly. It's not a priority for me)

You're totally right about the filler bosses though. I had forgotten about that until my last run. There are also a lot of bosses who don't give Star Levels in the game but they're usually optional like the octopus or Dario. I suppose in NG+ they add up to 99 and then you're invincible.

Wolf Kanno

03-24-2018, 05:41 PM

What does the bit about Lavos in the Dead Sea say? Did you find it?

Nothing particularly special. It basically was an analysis of what Lavos was. Parasite living within the planet since 65 million B.C. Then the computer shorts out.

Also apparently a dead Johnny can be found there which is appropriate since I just got done racing that jerk in my current CT run. (it's going slowly. It's not a priority for me)

Yes there is, but I failed to find him. I did spot the race car Crono used though.

You're totally right about the filler bosses though. I had forgotten about that until my last run. There are also a lot of bosses who don't give Star Levels in the game but they're usually optional like the octopus or Dario. I suppose in NG+ they add up to 99 and then you're invincible.

From what I've read, there are 45 Star levels per playthrough regardless of which choices you make. You'll be nearly invincible around the time you get to the 60s except against some of the end game stuff which isn't much different from CT.

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Didn't get much accomplished last night, mostly went to Guldove to get the plot coupons needed to start talking to the Dragons and open the quest to get the Chrono Cross. I did revisit Viper Manor and obtained Viper's sword, Zoah and Norris' Lv. 7 Techs, and unlocked Karsh's quest for his Lv. 7 Tech, though I'm likely going to fight some of the dragons first cause Solt and Peppor are pretty nasty for this particular fight.

Not sure what order to do the dragons, except I usually leave Black and Sky for the end. I'm actually trying to remember how to even get to Gaia's Navel.

Wolf Kanno

03-26-2018, 09:23 AM

Ugh, all six dragons down. The most difficult was the Sky Dragon, though Green Dragon was the only one I reset for cause Fargo couldn't steal from him and his Green Plate is one of the most valuable of the bunch. I wish I had reset for the Fire Dragon cause I somehow managed to steal his other drop, which is a decent piece of armor for kid characters, but frankly the Red Plate is a lot more valuable.

I did complete the Marbule quest, which was pretty nice, and I even took down Solt and Peppor for Karsh's final tech and to open the way for the Dario Quest.

I recruited Leah, Miki, and Steena; I find it highly amusing that of the Miki/Nikki duo, you end up recruiting their opposite world counterparts. Even more amusing when you think how the more well-adjusted versions don't bother to help you. Steena is one of those characters I wish was better than she is. She tricks into thinking she's a fighter when she's really a squishy mage, but I give her props for her Techs all being summons of bosses. Speaking of which, I finally got Serge's final Tech as Lynx, and it's so sad you only get to use for a few places before you switch over. I frankly found Forever Zero to be a much cooler looking Tech than Flying Arrow.

I got to the Dark Serge fight at Ft. Dragonia Home World so I can finally change back, and completely forgot about the fight, so I ended up facing him with a very ill-prepared party, and I wanted to get a hold of some of his high level spells since I've been kind of lax on that front. I did acquire a few of the weaker summons like Mothership and Sanja. Anyway, I'll come back to thump him with my All-Star Team of Lynx/Serge, Fargo, and Karsh.

I'm going to do Dario's quest after I change back and then work on getting a few of the Rainbow Gear. I kind of want to savor Chronopolis so I don't wish to rush it just yet.

In story observations, I feel like Fargo's past is easily one of the few untold stories in the game that I would really like to know. I'm assuming Nikki's play at the Marbule concert is a variation of how Fargo met Zelbess but I still want to know why Fargo and Viper are enemies, how Zelbess died,and the circumstances that led to Fargo being separated from his kids as well as his falling out with Marbule. It's questions like these that make me wish the game had focused more on some of the characters. Like you won't even get all of Dario's backstory unless you recruit Glenn and do Karsh's backstory. Yet, Fargo's story still has several unanswered questions that kind of nag at me, and I feel like CC's narrative could have been stronger had the game given it more of a spotlight. Lord Viper is another figure that bothers me cause for how much importance is placed on him in the story, he doesn't have much of his own story and is more of a plot device for other characters. It would have been nice to give him more characterization and maybe delve into why he wanted the Frozen Flame and was even willing to join forces with Lynx to seek it out.

Wolf Kanno

03-27-2018, 10:06 AM

Well silly me forgot to save after beating the Sky Dragon, so I had to fight him again but this time he was a bit easier and I made sure to bring an UltraNova Trap with me for the fight.

Decided that since I was going to need to bring Riddel for the Dario fight and I only had one Black Plate, I should probably fight him as Lynx. Dario is still one of the nastier bosses in this game with his high defense and attack power combined with his nasty counters and Tech skills. I do find it amusing that Dario's Techs are basically Dash and Gash, which I believe is Glenn's Lv. 7 Tech, Shockwave, which is from Crono, and then Conducta Rod which is eerily similar to a Dual Tech between Crono and Frog in CT.

Despite getting killed from Dario's combo attack midway in the fight, Riddel with the Black Plate turned out to be the MVP of the fight since she could tank all of his nasty magic/Tech skills and her high magic combined with innate white allowed her to do far more consistent damage than poor Serge and Karsh.

Killed Dark Serge faster than I meant to and got the next major "Btw, this is a CT sequel" spiel from the Dragons. Became Serge again and got all of my old party members back, which is pretty anti-climatic for me since all the good members on this file were already on my team. After that, I spent the rest of my evening collecting the Master Hammer for Prism gear, and various Lv. 7 techs for some of my party. I still need to drop by Another World's Guldove to collect Mel and Orlha, though I did remember to pick up Turnip. I think Funguy was the only character I missed on this file that I could have recruited but that's largely due to me never bothering with his quest and a certain action that is easy to do in Nikki's quest to enter Viper Manor removes the easy way to recruit him.

Wolf Kanno

03-29-2018, 10:18 PM

Finally got to Disc 2.

I took on the optional boss Criosphinx, and once again, he provided another example of where taking to more awful choice is more beneficial. What's unique about this boss is that he can be defeated in two different ways. When the battle starts, he challenges you to answer some riddles he gives by casting the corresponding element on him that answers the riddle, or you can just smack him in the face and begin one of the tougher boss battles in the game.

Why violence is the better answer is due to the "prizes" for defeating him. If you go the pacifist route and answer his six riddles, you don't technically gain anything except the answers to his riddles actually gives you a hint to the puzzle needed to stop the Dream Devourer and get the good ending. This is pretty easy but feels pretty anti-climatic. Beating him through violence is much more difficult cause he hits hard and casts Earthquake and ThundaStorm consecutively. If you don't have a Yellow Plate, he'll TPK you within the first round. So using the Mastermune, Yellow Plate, and a few choice accessories and elements to make this manageable, I was able to get Serge to beat him. Defeating him through violence awards you with the Sunglasses Accessory which is similar to the Prism Specs in CT and allows you to do some serious damage when equipped.

I also collected the last of the Summons, recruited Funguy, and picked up a few more character's Lv. 7 Techs. Despite both of them looking super goofy and kind of being awful in battle, I feel like NeoFio and Turnip have some interesting elements going for them narratively speaking. NeoFio sometimes makes comments about how self-aware she is to how unnatural her existence is and seems to envy other lifeforms, which ties in nicely to the games themes. Turnip gave me a bit of a head trip cause it turns out he's the manifestation of a dream from the sleeping Dragoon in the Barracks back in Another World. He explains when Turnip dreams, he is that soldier and if the soldier wakes up, he might disappear. Pretty trippy stuff that I almost missed if I wasn't reading TV Tropes and checked myself in-game. It's a shame they're both awful in battle.

The one character I ended up testing and really liking was Orlha, a character whom I felt deserved a bigger role in the story considering how dramatic the conclusion to her subplot about her missing twin sister was. Helping things here is that she's a pretty damn strong fighter. She's like a Blue Innate version of Greco, being all strength and terrible magic but considering how useless magic gets in later playthroughs, this is not a bad weakness.What really surprised me is that her first basic tech skill may actually be a Xenogears reference. I'm pretty sure it's a Deathblow used by Fei and Citan.

I've just now reached Chronopolis and will be savoring this a bit. Once Terra Tower opens up, I'll try to farm the White and Black Shiny Ingredients to start making some Prism Equipment. Though money might be an issue and I've seem to have missed the accessory that boosts money earned.

Wolf Kanno

04-04-2018, 06:24 AM

Been busy with RL stuff but I finished Chronopolis and reached Terra Tower.

I still consider Chronopolis and The Dead Sea to both be the high points of the game's plot, cool stuff and interesting revelations, less filler boss battles, and some great music. I did laugh a few times in Chronopolis cause I swear they borrowed some sets from Xenogears. The room with the map of El Nido broadcast on the floor looks suspiciously like the one at Bart's HQ.

Something I never caught until TV tropes kind of brought it to my attention was the fact that Fate basically screwed herself over by being stupid. I mean she finally gets Serge's body and dumps him in the doomed dimension and hat does Dark Serge do? Terrorize El Nido and wait for Serge to come back and even get his body back instead of you know... reclaiming the Frozen Flame and becoming a god. Fate seems to have contracted stupid from Sephiroth and Seymour it seems in the whole "you could have accomplished your main goal if you didn't keep trying to make the heroes your cosmic chew toys".

Also, I'm calling BS on Starky saying his ship couldn't carry the cast to Terra Tower, that thing is easily twice the size of Korcha's boat. By the way, I still consider the whole ordeal of reaching Terra Tower to be silly and contrived. I honestly still giggle watching the boat fly. You mean to tell me that Chronopolis doesn't have flying vehicle stored somewhere on the premise? Also, why can't my flying boat get me to Gaea's Navel?

I have enough materials to make some of the Prism gear, but I may leave it for a second playthrough as my party feels pretty OP by this point and I don't feel they need any more of an improvement. Not to mention I just don't want to go to the trouble of grinding all those Shiny materials cause that's busy work.

I'll tackle Terra Tower soonish.

Freya

04-05-2018, 05:06 PM

I really need to give this game another try, I have never beaten it. You guys are making me feel like I need to though.

Fynn

04-05-2018, 05:07 PM

Because you do. But do Trigger first.

Wolf Kanno

04-09-2018, 09:44 PM

Been awhile since I updated. Anyway, I'm at the end of Terra Tower. Just finished off the last of the elemental bosses. It took me awhile cause I caved and actually grinded some of the Shiny materials to make three Prism Armors and weapons for Serge, Kid, Karsh, and Fargo. The hardest part was learning quickly to switch to weaker weapons so my party would stop murdering all the enemies before using the summons.

I forgot how weird Terra Tower was. Like the random "prisoner" in stone who doesn't tell you who he is but stops you long enough to explain what Terra Tower is, and then when you run into Balthasar again after he hacks into the place, just so he can info dump on you. I really feel like this all points towards the devs having to rush the ending sections.

I do forget how much this place reminds me of the Black Omen from CT though since it's the closest thing to a "final dungeon" the game gets but the actual final boss is disconnected from it like the BO was in CT. Anyway, I'll take on the Dragon God next and finally put an end to the Time Devourer. Then I'll give some final thoughts on CC which will likely make into my entry for it on my list, and detail my thoughts on a Chrono 3.

Wolf Kanno

04-13-2018, 03:30 AM

And...finished! Forgot how much of a complete pain in the ass trying to beat the final boss with the Chrono Cross is. Overall, Chrono Cross is still pretty fun and very quirky title. I do still feel it's on the lower end of my Top 100 though. I am simply not a fan of the battle system, and realizing how screwed over you can get by certain choices you make doesn't help it either. In hindsight, Nikki is the worst starting choice and despite the extra scenes you get with him, none of it is worth it really. The best characters that are not Glenn and Guile are all reserved for Lynx's side of the plot which is largely the high point of the game in both better recruits and just more interesting stuff happening in the plot in general. The game also has Square's typical issues at the time of feeling a bit rushed towards the end. Everything after Chronopolis is pretty surreal overall and feels less like an artistic choice and more likely the devs were just trying to cram as much as they could in the end exposition wise while trying to avoid Xenogears' "Second Disc Cutscene" issues.

One question I kept asking myself is whether I would be cool with seeing a Chrono 3. My answer is honestly yes, as long as Kato and Mitsuda were both part of the projects and had creative control. My other stipulations are as followed:

New Cast - While I'm cool with older characters from the previous games appearing in the game, I would feel better about the game if it starred a new cast of characters and new scenario that like CC, doesn't quite feel like a direct sequel until much later in the story.

Cameos and temporary party members are cool - With that said, I wouldn't mind the new cast throwing down with Glenn (either of them), Fargo, or Magus.

Dual and Triple Techs are a must - I feel these mechanics were the heart and soul of CT, and while CC badly under performs with them, I can't help but feel that many of them are still pretty cool when you actually pull them off. I would love for Chrono 3 to utilize these features into the combat, though not necessarily as a focal point like CT. It can and should have a new combat system, but I would like some better integration of cool combat elements from the previous entries like CC's elemental field mechanic.

Villains - Shoulds largely be new, I'm not saying that I wouldn't mind another throw-down with Dalton or for Lavos to weasel his way back into the plot somehow, but I feel CC showed that the franchise has room for engaging and cool villains. My own idea would be that the new set of villains is another group of time/dimensional travelers, as both games largely dealt with stationary villains who simply can exist for epochs of time, so it would be interesting to see the heroes trying to fight another group with similar capabilities as them.

The game should still have plenty of references to the older titles - While I feel there is enough blank spaces to fill concerning CT's world, I also fear that the nature of El Nido in CC would make it easy for a new title to ignore it. I would like to avoid a Dark Souls 3, where the devs play heavy lip service to the first game while largely ignoring the second one.

New art designs by an anime/manga author - I feel this is a given. The first game was done by Dragon Ball's creator and the second game was done by Escaflowne's, so I feel it would be cool to continue the trend and use someone from the anime/manga industry. My first choice, though highly controversial would be Eiichiro Oda of One Piece fame as I feel his art style is very distinct and would help the game move away from the more generic anime designs you see in most games. Of course I know a lot of people who can't stand his art style so my second choice would be Masaki Kajishima of Tenchi Muyo! fame since I feel his art style would be more visually appealing for casual players but still distinct enough to stand out from other anime based games.

With Chrono done for the moment, I'm thinking of starting up the SaGa franchise.